Industrial robot sales in China hit record

Children play with an intelligent robot at a nursery school in Wuhan, capital of Hubei provinceCredit:
Hu Dongong for China Daily

12 July 2018 • 10:00am

The demand for robots in China is vast but foreign brands have cornered three-quarters of the market and domestic manufacturers lost out in 2017

China purchased 141,000 industrial robots in 2017, up 58.1 per cent year-on-year, but foreign brands accounted for nearly three-quarters of that, showing that the gap is still widening between Chinese robot makers and their foreign peers.

The China International Robot Industry Summit, held in Shanghai, said the sales and growth rate of industrial robots hit records in 2017. Among industrial robots, 37,825 were domestically manufactured, up 29.8 per cent year-on-year.

“As robotics is expanding into nearly every industry, Chinese robot makers should realise the gap between them and foreign brands, take advantage of China’s robotics development boom and learn from foreign experience to help China grow from the world’s largest robot market into a robot manufacturing power,” said Qu Daokui, president of China Robot Industry Alliance and chief executive of the Shenyang-based Siasun Robot and Automation company.

China has become the world’s largest industrial robot market since 2013, and currently its domestic suppliers are moving up the supplier chain by offering more high-end products in recent years

According to Mr Qu, foreign robot makers sold 103,191 robots to China in 2017, up 71.9 per cent from a year earlier. Although Chinese domestic suppliers had expanded their market share to 32.7 per cent in 2016, the trend was reversed in 2017, as their share shrank to 26.8 per cent.

In his report on the global market for industrial robots, Junji Tsuda, president of the International Federatin of Robotics (IFR), noted that about 387,000 industrial robots were installed in 2017 worldwide, up 31 per cent year-on-year, creating $50bn (£38bn) in revenue, with China as one of the key drivers behind the strong growth.

China has become the world’s largest industrial robot market since 2013, and currently its domestic suppliers are moving up the supplier chain by offering more high-end products in recent years, the report added.

In 2017, 64.7 per cent of the robots sold in China were articulated robots, surging by two-thirds year-on-year.

Meanwhile, 42.1 per cent of the robots sold by domestic suppliers were articulated robots, a rise of 35.5 per cent from 2016.

In the meantime, the leading position of foreign robots is consolidating－with almost a 90 per cent stake of the automotive market as well as more than 70 percent of the computing, communication, and consumer electronics (3C) industry market in China.

Experts said there is still great potential for China’s robot market. Robot density, or the number of robots per 10,000 persons used in manufacturing industry, is on the rise in China.

“The robot density of China reached 101 last year, and it is going to reach 150 by 2020,” said Zhu Sendi, committee member of the National Manufacturing Strategy Advisory Committee and secretary-general of the Strategic Emerging Industries Expert Advisory Committee.

This article was originally produced and published by China Daily. View the original article at www.chinadaily.com.cn